Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

Just dealing with the shadow minister's first point: the Labor Party when in government talked endlessly about broadband and, after six years in government, had passed about two per cent of the population. It was an extraordinary failure in delivery: all talk, no action. It was in fact fibre to the press release. The rollout was designed entirely for political purposes. I see the honourable member for Chifley here, and I can give a very good example from his electorate.

So unconcerned were the Labor Party about people's broadband needs, so unconcerned were they about where broadband was good, bad or indifferent, that they did not do a survey of broadband availability—from which the honourable member just quoted. We were the first government in Australia to do that. It was never done before. Everyone talks about broadband. Nobody prior to the election of the Abbott government had ever done the work. We did that, and we were able to identify where broadband was good—and in many parts of Australia it is good. It is very good, in fact. In other parts, it is absolutely shocking. So we were able to identify them. And we said we would, so far as is practical, ask the NBN Co to prioritise those areas that are worst served, and that is exactly what they are doing.

If you look at the premises in the 18-month rollout, the percentage of underserved premises in the precincts where the NBN is being deployed is significantly higher than it is in the overall population. Of course, in a fantasy world, in an ideal, imaginary world, it would be lovely to just be able to go and fix this house here and that house there, but plainly—the honourable member knows this—it is a project that has to proceed in a contiguous way. Given that the worst served areas tend to be those areas which are furthest from the exchange—so the signal on an ADSL service attenuates to a greater degree and, hence, the service is poorer—obviously, you have to do that whole exchange area, and that will include premises that have pretty good ADSL and premises that have not. But, as far as is practicable, the NBN is doing precisely that.

Let me come back to what Labor did, because this is the great contrast. It is sad and comical in a very black sort of way. Not long after the election, Ziggy Switkowski, then the new chairman of NBN Co, and I went out to inspect some work of the NBN in, in fact, the electorate of the honourable member for Chifley. We got out there, and the NBN workers were there and they were doing what they do. They were stringing cable, connecting houses and doing a very good job. We noticed that in that particular part of that suburb there was Telstra HFC, so anyone in that street could order a 100-meg broadband product from Telstra. So that was it. But that is not all; there is more. Along the electricity poles, there was also the Optus HFC. So people in those streets could order two competing 100-meg products, and those streets had been prioritised by the Labor Party.

The Optus and Telstra fixed line HFC services—before the construction of the NBN—generally speaking, offered the best fixed line broadband in Australia. There are some areas where they overlap and compete and many areas, of course, where they do not. You could not find a part of Australia with a better range of broadband than these streets. That is where the money was being spent; that was the priority. It is blindingly obvious that the reason that it was happening there was that it was in the honourable member's marginal seat. It was all politics. Fibre to the press release was all that Labor was about.

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